City backs battle against bedbugs

Prodded by rising complaints and pressure from some elected officials, activists and the media, the Bloomberg administration gave limited support Tuesday to launching a war on bedbugs.

Testifying at a City Council hearing, representatives of the health, housing and sanitation departments announced their support for Council legislation to establish a task force to study the city's widening bedbug problem and recommend remedies.

Advertisement

But the officials backed off supporting other Council-sponsored bills to ban the resale of reconditioned mattresses, require the Health Department to establish a program to train bedbug exterminators, and require residents to wrap possibly contaminated furnishings in plastic bags when discarding them for sanitation pickups.

She said bedbug complaints to the city's 311 hotline grew from 10,509 in 2006 to 22,218 last year. The blood-sucking parasites have been found in homes, apartments, schools, hotels, police stations, hospitals and other locations, she said. Both rich and poor have had bedbug woes, she noted.